ravage
August 7, 2008, 4:18pm
40
There are no inaccuracies in the bible, that’s not true. This can be proven by the dead sea scrolls. They compared the dead sea scrolls to the currently used manuscripts and they matched perfectly. The dead sea scrolls were 1,500 years older than the oldest existing manuscripts and yet they still matched without ANY errors. The only differences found were in the spelling of certain words that still meant the same thing. These differences were merely the result of cultural changes in the way that they spell certain words. God’s word (the bible) has been preserved.
They are not just spelling mistakes. Most are spelling/grammar/otherwise inconsquential mistakes, quite a few however are important for doctrinal reasons. I suggest the book by Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus. Quoting an article on the book:
The Bible simply wasn’t error-free. The mistakes grew exponentially as he traced translations through the centuries. There are some 5,700 ancient Greek manuscripts that are the basis of the modern versions of the New Testament, and scholars have uncovered more than 200,000 differences in those texts.
“Put it this way: There are more variances among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament,” Ehrman summarizes.
Most of these are inconsequential errors in grammar or metaphor. But others are profound. The last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark appear to have been added to the text years later – and these are the only verses in that book that show Christ reappearing after his death.
Another critical passage is in 1 John, which explicitly sets out the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). It is a cornerstone of Christian theology, and this is the only place where it is spelled out in the entire Bible – but it appears to have been added to the text centuries later, by an unknown scribe.
For a man who believed the Bible was the inspired Word of God, Ehrman sought the true originals to shore up his faith. The problem: There are no original manuscripts of the Gospels, of any of the New Testament.
He wrote a tortured paper at Princeton that sought to explain how an episode in Mark might be true, despite clear evidence to the contrary. A professor wrote in the margin:
“Maybe Mark just made a mistake.”
The Book of Bart